Magic and the Modern Girl (7 page)

It came down to the brownie sundae or the apple cobbler. Clara turned the conversation back to Gran’s impending nuptials, and no one was surprised when we ended up with both desserts, along with three spoons. We spent the rest of the morning talking about appropriate colors for an autumn wedding. I tried to let the distinctions between crimson and scarlet, between tangerine and orange carry me away from my worry about my warder—my warder, my witchcraft, and a promise that I might have made a little too rashly for my own good.

4

I
’d lied to Clara.

I had absolutely no idea where David lived. In fact, when she asked me in Whitlow’s, I’d been so surprised that I hadn’t been able to answer for a moment. He and I had worked together for two years, and it had simply never occurred to me to wonder about where he lived.

I knew that must sound strange. After all that we had been through together, all the times that he had swooped in to my rescue….

But that was it.
He
had swooped in. He had come to me. Besides, we
worked
together. I didn’t waste my time worrying about where my library boss, Evelyn, lived. I didn’t waste a spare moment thinking about the respective abodes of my intern, the circulation clerk, the cataloger.

Now, boyfriends—I had a long history of caring about
their
houses. Deep in my heart, I think I had always been the teensiest bit suspicious of the I.B. (that used to stand for Imaginary Boyfriend, before everything went south, and I started making up brilliant new pet names for the lying, cheating scum of an Infuriating Boob). I had wondered about his home, pictured myself in his kitchen, his living room—okay, in his bedroom. I should have read a lot more into his never taking me to see his home.

And last year’s romantic debacle of the Coven Eunuch? In retrospect, everything had gone wrong just after I visited his house. Well, it had gone wrong from the moment we’d met, if I wanted to be brutally honest, but I’d become aware of the wrongness after I visited his home. All the clues were laid out for me there, everything that I should have known, should have recognized.

So why hadn’t I ever given any thought to where David lived?

Not that it really mattered now. I was a reference librarian. I could find one person’s home in a major metropolitan area, without even breaking a sweat.

Except, David wasn’t listed in any of the phone books I had at my fingertips—print or electronic. I needed to resort to more obscure databases. If I crossed my fingers and clicked on the box that said I had a legitimate legal reason to be searching credit records…. Well, no one would be the wiser.

Unless David decided to prosecute me for tracking him down.

Not that he would do that, I reminded myself for the thousandth time. It wasn’t as if we had fought. I had just hurt his feelings a little. He would be pleased to see me, I whispered inside my head. He would be thrilled that I had taken the initiative, come to him for a change.

Yeah. Right.

I’d always pictured David living in a D.C. rowhouse, maybe on the third and fourth floors of some nineteenth-century socialite’s converted city manse. I imagined him walking down a long block, shaded by oak trees. He was anonymous, lost in the city as he let himself in the security door on the street, as he climbed the flights of stairs to his own pied-à-terre. The house itself was filled with odd-shaped rooms, accented by dark corners where generations of dust defied good housekeeping.

David walked to little neighborhood restaurants, supplementing his empty refrigerator with leftovers from meals eaten at family-owned dives. He haunted used bookstores, trying to scare up a witchy title or two. And he rarely drove his gorgeous Lexus, the night-black car that I had seen only a handful of times, the luxury automobile with such sensuous leather that goose bumps rose on my arms whenever I thought of it.

Well, I was right about the car.

According to my rather illegal databases, David didn’t actually live downtown. He didn’t live in Washington at all. Instead, his home was out in the Maryland suburbs. The exurbs. Who was I kidding? He lived in the country. I pulled a map from the Internet, but I still checked one of the road atlases that we keep in the Peabridge reference collection, because I had never driven out that far from civilization.

On Saturday morning, I sent a quick e-mail to Gran before I swung by her apartment building. I used my own set of keys to borrow her Lincoln Town Car, not even stopping upstairs to say hello. She’d never miss the car—she only took it out once a month or so. Besides, she was the one who had made me promise to take this trip.

I worked my way through the city and headed into Maryland. I passed the infamous Beltway and watched the scenery change from freeway to small town America to open farmland. When I’d traveled almost to the Pennsylvania border, I knew that I was getting close. I double-checked the map a couple of times, but even using the odometer as a gauge, I missed the final turn and had to backtrack. Twice.

David lived at the end of a winding unpaved road. The countryside swelled in gentle hills to either side of the twisting drive, waist-high grass rippling like a living creature’s pelt. A clutch of trees ended the meandering path, and I pulled Gran’s car into a gravel-strewn turnout, parking next to a dusty white pick-up truck.

The house that nestled in the trees looked like a farmer’s dream from a generation or two past. A porch wrapped around the two sides of the building that I could see, and a glider invited me to settle onto its thick striped cushions. The clapboard walls were crisp with white paint, their hunter-green shutters beckoning like an advertisement for peaceful country life. From the front seat of the Lincoln, I couldn’t see inside the curtained windows.

As the car’s engine ticked into silence, a huge Labrador retriever stirred on the porch. I’d missed him at first; he’d been in the shadows from the eaves. Before I could worry about opening my door, about approaching the possibly hostile hound, the dog began to pound his tail against the porch in a steady, welcoming rhythm. My warder might be forbidding, but his dog had failed to get the memo.

I wiped my hands against the skirt of my cotton dress. I’d dressed carefully for this meeting. I didn’t want David to think that I took this intrusion lightly. I’d thought about shorts; they were appealing, given the humid blanket that smothered the summer air. But shorts were too casual, too flippant. I’d tried on jeans, but they were too hot for the journey. I’d slipped into khakis, but I knew that they’d be wrinkled by the time I completed the drive.

At last, I’d settled on a sea-green sundress. Its halter neck left my shoulders bare, so it was cool enough for the weather. Neko had picked it out for me at the beginning of the summer. He and Jacques had somehow scored tickets for an afternoon tea at the British embassy, and the guys had invited Melissa and me to join them, on condition that Neko could dictate our wardrobe. So that we wouldn’t embarrass them. We, Melissa and I, not embarrass them, Neko and Jacques. As if Neko’s downing an entire pot of clotted cream hadn’t set our British hosts on edge….

Enough. I wasn’t accomplishing anything sitting in the car. Besides, with the air conditioner turned off, the heat was rapidly becoming oppressive. I could feel my hair curling against the back of my neck, rebelling against the simple French twist I’d accomplished before I’d left the cottage.

When I opened the car door, I became aware of a noise—rhythmic, constant. There was a sharp chop, followed by a sweeping sound, a pause, and then a repeat of the sequence. Over and over and over.

Curling my toes against the soles of my sandals, I followed a path around the edge of the house. The walkway was paved with shattered oyster shells, following the finest tradition of our colonial forefathers. I knew of a dozen books that discussed the layout of eighteenth-century footpaths. Perhaps I should get one for David, provide him with original source support for his landscaping. That would surely sweeten my appearance on his proverbial doorstep. I could just head home, find the perfect volume, and then I’d return. I promised.

I turned back toward the car, but the dog blocked my way. I’d been so intent on keeping shards of shell from slipping beneath my feet that I had not heard the animal trailing along behind me. He stopped when I did, his heavy tail lashing back and forth. It was a friendly motion, not threatening, but it was enough to remind me that I had a mission. I had a reason for being here. I couldn’t retreat into the Peabridge’s collection as an excuse from confronting my warder.

Chunk, came the sound again. Swish. Pause. Chunk. Swish. Pause.

I took a fortifying breath and a few more steps, moving forward until I could peer around the corner of the house. The dog moved up to my side.

Chunk. Swish. Pause.

And there stood my warder, in the shade of a massive oak tree, dressed in faded blue jeans and a tattered plaid shirt. He wore a pair of protective goggles that would have been geeky, if they hadn’t made me realize just how hard he was working.

Working. Splitting wood. Coolly. Methodically. With a precision that sent a chill up my spine, despite the heavy August heat.

Chunk. His wedge-shaped maul bit deep into the edge of a round. Swish. He swept the cut wood off the block. Pause. He shifted the round, readying himself to make another Paul Bunyan stroke.

Chunk. Swish. Pause. Chunk. Swish. Pause. Chunk.

Silence.

I’m not sure what made him notice me at last. Maybe it was something about the witchy bond between us, the warder ties that stretched taut, even though we hadn’t worked together for months. Maybe it was the dog’s wagging tail. Maybe he just happened to glance up.

But he took his time setting down the maul, removing his goggles. He raised the tattered tails of his shirt and wiped his face dry. I became intensely aware of the sounds around us—the breeze cresting through the long grass in the field beyond the oak tree, the birds that called to each other from their hidden retreats.

“Jane,” David said, and he might have been greeting me at some formal party.

The dog started to whine deep in his throat, as if he wanted to go to his master, but knew that he was forbidden from approaching the work area. “Stay, Spot,” David said, enforcing the verbal command with a firm hand gesture.

“Spot?” I asked. My laugh sounded a little giddy, somehow relieved. I looked from the jet-black animal to his inscrutable master.

David shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I know the way that feels.” Now, why had I said that? What had seemed like a good idea at what time? And why was I admitting any of that to my warder, who could be one of the bossiest, most controlling men on the planet?

He swallowed, and I could just make out the pulse beating at the base of his throat. “What are you doing here, Jane?”

Busted. I hadn’t expected him to ask me so directly. Or so soon.

And what was I going to answer? That I’d made a promise to Gran? That I had woken up filled with insatiable curiosity? That the spells I’d been working had made me twitch for the time we used to spend training together?

“Can’t a witch visit her warder when the spirit grips her?”

“Not usually. No.” I looked at him, sudden panic sprinting across my brain. Had I really bucked some long-standing witch-and-warder rule? He sighed and amended, “At least, not usually. Most witches summon their warders
to
them.”

“I’m not most witches.”

“So I noticed.” The dryness in his voice ratcheted up the heat beneath the oak tree. Once again, I felt the tingle in my fingertips, the spark of energy that had been growing since I’d worked my dish-washing spell a week before. I couldn’t tell if he read something in my face, but he suddenly seemed to remember his manners. “Do you want something to drink?”

“A glass of water would be great.”

For just a second, I thought that he was going to leave me standing there, set Spot to guard me while he went into the house. But he waved the dog to his side as he stalked away, making for a side door that I quickly learned opened onto the kitchen. He gestured for me to enter first, and the black lab followed behind me, his nails clicking softly on the Mexican tile floor.

As my eyes adjusted to the lack of full sunlight, I saw just how wrong my made-up vision of David’s home had been. My warder wasn’t living in dust and shadows. Instead, he was living in the heart of a Crate and Barrel catalog.

The farmhouse kitchen was huge and airy, flooded with sunlight that streamed through tall windows. Through a doorway, I glimpsed a dining room, and beyond it a living room with a single austere couch, matched by two chairs that seemed comfortable enough to settle into for a rainy afternoon of book reading. There were a couple of wooden end tables and a lamp or two. Everything looked neat. Calm. Ordinary.

The kitchen was picture-perfect, as well, in the same well laid-out, highly functioning way. Somehow, I’d never pictured David as a cook, but now I could clearly see him standing over his Viking stove, anodized aluminum pans heavy in his strong hands as he whipped up some sustaining dish.

Unerringly, he went to the cupboard beside the sink and retrieved two simple clear glasses. Ice cubes clanked against each other as he excavated them from the freezer, and he tossed one to Spot, who caught it in midair. He poured water from a sleek filtered pitcher in the fridge.

As he handed my glass to me, I blushed unexpectedly. I had to be reacting to the precise perfection of his movements. If I had served a guest in my own kitchen, I would have searched for a clean glass for at least a minute, and then I would have needed to crack a stubborn ice-cube tray. My kitchen faucet had never even seen a filter, and the water ran warm in the middle of the summer.

“Your home is beautiful,” I said, trying to distract myself.

“It’s been in my family for decades.”

“I was surprised to find you out here,” I said, desperately attempting to make this conversation a normal one, between two ordinary people, not between a witch and her warder. “I expected you to live in the city.”